The ‘Superman’ of all CFL trades (anybody know where I can get some Kryptonite?)

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The Canadian Price
Former B.C. Lions' receiver Geroy Simon pauses while speaking to reporters after the CFL football team traded him to the Saskatchewan Roughriders, during a news conference in Surrey, B.C., on Thursday January 24, 2013.

What are they smoking in Lotus Land?

Whatever it is, it obviously has a negative effect on their football IQ.

It’s hard to believe that the B.C. Lions have traded the CFL’s all-time passing yards leader to the Saskatchewan Roughriders for a handful of beans, but it’s true.

Geroy Simon, a.k.a. Superman, the league’s leading receiver and arguably the CFL’s greatest receiver ever, for bench-rider Justin Harper and a third-round pick in the 2014 Canadian College Draft.

I’ve been sitting here for the last 20 minutes reading that sentence over and over again, patiently waiting for it to make sense, but it doesn’t and it never will.

Good thing, if you’re a Roughies fan.

Here’s what Saskatchewan gets: a receiver who has caught at least 100 passes in 10 of the last 12 seasons, who has caught 100 touchdown passes and has scored a rushing touchdown, even though he’s a receiver. He has piled up more yards than any receiver in CFL history — 15,787. That’s damned near nine miles. He’s 29 away from breaking the record for number of catches, too.

Last year, although he missed five games because of a hamstring injury, he caught 54 passes for 700 yards and scored two touchdowns. Bad year, but he’s clearly close to breaking Ben Cahoon’s record for catches, at 1,017. And he’ll do it in green and white.

Let’s acknowledge that Simon is getting a little long in the tooth for a football player: He’s 37, and will be 38 in his 13th season. But for the last 12 seasons, he has been the primary weapon on offence for the CFL’s reigning football dynasty, and they just sent him to Saskatchewan for a guy who caught nine passes last year.

No disrespect to Harper, but I could catch nine passes.

Well, maybe not.

This is either going to go down as the greatest heist since the Great Train Robbery, or those sneaky B.C. felines aren’t telling us something. Has Superman succumbed to Kryptonite? Are his hamstrings shot? Is Harper, who has spent his entire career keeping the bench company, some kind of secret weapon?

Simon, who’s always been right so far, says he’s a winner and has plenty of that winning football left to bring to Saskatchewan. And really, all he has to do is catch 10 passes to surpass Harper’s most recent output for an entire year. Speaking of 10, did I mention that Simon has 10 100-yard games against Saskatchewan in his career, 62 in total?

It may be his last hurrah, or, like the legendary Gerry Rice, he may have a few hundred catches under his cape before he returns to the Fortress of Solitude or Florida or wherever it is retired superheroes go.